A while back, I praised Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter for creating the perfect theme park food crossover. Famous fictional food in a theme park is something Disney has never quite mastered, though they do allow you to eat famous fictional mice for every meal of the day.
But now that bare-bones approach is about to become extinct.
Today was my first opportunity to sample the many new shops and food locations that have sprung up in Construction Wall City Animal Kingdom, and I’m here to declare that a new theme park treat champion has been crowned.
Zuri’s Sweets opened only a few days ago, and features exciting and strange beef jerky flavors, African infused olive oils, and candy dispensing machines that actually dispense trail mix and other exotic combinations instead of M&Ms and Reese’s Pieces.
It’s one of Disney’s better attempts at merchandising in recent memory. It has not yet been overrun with the same generic merchandise that you can find everywhere else, and even the Timon and Pumbaa gummy candies at least have an African slant to them.
But the candy and pastry counter caught my eye. Not because there are new elephant and monkey candy apples, but because for the first time anywhere, a theme park is offering an assortment of pastry animal poop that you can buy.
How much would you pay to eat animal poop? $10? $20? How about only $3.99 (or one Disney snack coupon)!!
No joke, it is a series of pastries called “Match the Species,” and they are designed to look like the bowel movements of exotic animals. There are four flavors.
- Elephant
- Giraffe
- Cotton-Top Tamarin
- Hippo
We did not sample any of these delectable dishes, because we had already just come from the bathroom. But otherwise, I can assure you we would have been all over these like flies on… well, tasty chocolate scat, I guess.
Take that, Butter Beer.
Well, I heard people were grossed out and the crap shaped snacks have already been removed from the park. Kind of a shame!
The really is a shame. I mean yes, it’s gross, but at least it was a different idea, and actually fit well within AK. One can argue that it’s actually a funny way to be educational. I can’t believe that many people threw a fit!
So good, they’ll have ya saying “oh, shit!”.
Saw these on the Disney Food Blog yesterday. They all sound good. You’ll have to try them next time you’re there and let us know what you think. You sound take done of the elephant poop to MK, wait for one of the horse drawn vehicles to pass by, bend over like you picking something up off the ground, look at it for a second, sniff it and then take a bite (ala Bill Murray in Caddyshack).
Ah Caddyshack… I do wonder if this will help teach little kids the fine art of eating whatever looks chocolatey from the ground.